Interesting take on the undistinguished history of digital object identifiers and the handle system. Proposed as a means to ensure persistence of reference to resources and to manage access in digital rights management schemes, DOI and Handle met with receptive audiences in the publishing industry - and nowhere else. From my perspective, the system imposed a cost overhead in order to create an addressing system that was less reliable than the traditional URLs we use now (because you would be blocked access if the system went down, or if you didn't have the 'right' to access the resource).